St. Omer > Do you remember

St Omer Catering Annex.

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rubberguts:
Do not know if the Catering Annex was still being used for training cooks after National Service was discontinued (forget the name of the bloody place). Took around twelve minutes marching time four times daily.
The place was supervised by a Civvy attached bloke who ponced around in a morning suit. Think his name was Williams or Wilson? He had a mindfix that anyone who had not attended W.T.I, (Westminster Tech)  had no business being a special cook and took every opportunity to remind us of it. Fair enough. I had no quarrel with that. The Army thought otherwise.
Served outside The morning hot cocoa break was this jokers pet forte,   
He was insistent there be one level serving spoon of sugar to be stirred into the hay box container full of watery hot cocoa that tasted bloody revolting. Bollocks to that.  Whenever I got on the end of the spoon, sugar was shovelled in as soon as his back was turned.
 
An instructor who took over near the end of our training stint at the annexe (think his name was Dutton? 'Had the interesting habit of pronouncing the word Roux as Rux).
 End of week interior economy. Everything was clean, even the grotty aluminium  pudding basins.
 He produced a pile of wire wool, pointing to the pudding  basins said, "Those are going to shine. It won't take much."
 Muttering under our National Service Breaths, we told each other what part of the human anatomy we thought he most closely represented and reluctantly set about the task. What a transformation. Highly polished basins were displayed neatly in a pyramid. Over the next week, a trail of catering hierarchy appeared to view the  display. After that all the classrooms in St Omer began displaying polished pudding basins
 Over the years grotty aluminium pots got to me and during a spare moment were polished. Thankfully that urge has now subsided.

Ian E Scott:
The Annexe could well have been what us boys knew as The Garages ;D ;D
I wonder if that Instructor was Dickie Dutton?

denis huxley:
Ian , I think you are correct. Mind you my recollection of the garages is that they were more like aircraft hangers.
Dickie Dutton would be correct too. When i was an App the garages were used for drill parades,later they were used for tech training.

Ian E Scott:
Ah Yes,

"The Garages"! 

The NAAFI break whistle the rush for the raspberry buns and tea before the whistle went again to return to training.  How could anyone forget those days? ;D

rubberguts:
I remember the building was of Aldershot colour brick construction rather like a village hall or school with Gothic windows at one end.
To get there we marched out of St. Omer. Turned right, on past Blenheim Barracks, further along on the right were some married quarters where resided of all that was holy, the consummate archetypal Regimental Sergeant Major Britton. The detail ran foul of him one time but that is another story.

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